Cool guys

2009-02-24T16:36:00.000-08:00

Last week, I helped out a couple of my associates on a photo-shoot. They have both just let me know that they were kind enough to give me a shout out on their blogs. I am ashamed to admit that this was the first time I knew that either of them had a blog. However, now that I know, I think that everyone should take a couple of minutes out of their day and check them out.

James Justin

I'm just not that cool

2009-02-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

About 3 years ago, a fellow photographer and friend of mine told me about this great new technique called HDR (High Dynamic Range). For those of you who are not familiar with HDR, I will spare you the technical details about how it works, but basically it takes photos like these....

... and puts them together to make this.

It takes all of the dark details from the bright image, all of the bright details from the dark image, and all of the regular details from the regular image and puts them together to get a "perfect" all around exposure. This is a very big deal for people who shoot things like interiors, architecture, and landscapes (or anything else that is just to darn big to use strobe lighting for).

However, this is not what my friend was excited about. As it turns out, if you play with the settings while creating an HDR image, you can make something that looks like this...

Plus, if you are willing to spend a few extra minutes in processing, you don't even need multiple images. You can do all of this crazy, illustrative looking stuff from just one picture.

My friend said, "ISN'T THIS BADASS?!!"

To which I said, "THAT ROCKS!!!" (Yes, those were the exact words used)So my friend has used this technique over the past few years to give his work a very artistic and distinctive feel. Sadly, so has everyone else. As soon as people realized how easy it was to give photographs this look, everyone started doing it to ALL of their images. HDR has become one of the most overly and poorly used techniques in photography in the past decade. The hyper-realistic look created by HDR has been used over and over again by people that use it on photos that don't need it or benefit from it. Every person I meet now with Photoshop 3 and a point and shoot camera looks at me and says something to the effect of, "Hey! Your a photographer? Me TOO :)!! Don't you just LOOOVVVEEE HDR?! It's the COOLEST! LOL!!!"
To his credit, my friend is still using the technique and is still getting some very good results with it. He is cool enough to rise above the trend and continue to use it's extreme graphic qualities wisely to enhance his work for the greater good of the world. Unfortunately, I am not. I have come to realize that I will never be able to use this artistic medium to my advantage without being just another poser. I'm just not that cool. So, I will continue to use HDR, but only in the boring way that it was originally intended.

First Time

2009-02-16T14:31:00.001-08:00

Hello. My name is Alec Chvirko. I am a Boston based photographer and I have decided that it is finally time for me to get on board with the rest of the world and start blogging. So here I am. These are a couple of shots I took earlier this week when some friends and I were playing with our speedlights. Enjoy.

Alec Chvirko Photography

Cool guys

I'm just not that cool

First Time